ORGANIZATION
Americans for Tax Fairness was founded in 2012 to lead the fight against renewal of the George W. Bush tax cuts, which would have cost $3 trillion over 10 years. ATF is a 501(c)(3) project of New Venture Fund. (ATF’s sister organization, Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund, is a 501(c)(4) project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.)
ATF is a coalition of more than 400 national and state endorsing organizations that is guided by a Steering Committee of 30 national organizations drawn from unions, think tanks and advocacy groups. The coalition meets monthly to plan strategy and activities. ATF has a budget of about $1.2 million a year. (ATF Action Fund’s budget is about $200,000.) Funding comes from the following sources: foundations: 60%; major donors: 20%; grassroots members: 15%; and unions: 5%.
MISSION
ATF’s mission is to raise $10 trillion over the next 10 years by enacting federal tax reform that makes the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. We lost $2 trillion from the Trump-GOP tax cuts. The revenue would be used to invest in critical public services—healthcare, education, childcare, green energy, infrastructure—to make an economy that works for all by creating good-paying jobs, reducing inequality and closing the racial wealth gap.
PROGRAM
- Provide strategic direction and coordination to the coalition. ATF coordinates lobbying, public education, polling and messaging research, national and state communications strategies, field mobilization, and production of public education materials.
- Play the leading role in shaping progressive tax reform messaging. ATF identifies and disseminates winning messages on tax fairness issues to policymakers, coalition partners and the media so that allies are singing from the same songbook. We do this by conducting polls and aggregating information from other public polls, and by preparing messaging materials that are adjusted as new issues and developments occur in the tax-reform debate.
- Executing a robust communications program. ATF and its state partners secure up to 2,000 news stories and media mentions a year through earned media events, releasing reports, placing op-eds, and educating opinion writers. Our digital media program mobilizes activists through email and social media and engages Netroots groups and other coalition partners. We have a 750,000-person email list, 214,000 Facebook fans and 15,000 Twitter fans.
- Coordinating coalition lobbying efforts in Congress and at the grassroots. ATF coordinates national partners’ lobbyists to deliver a strong message to Congress. ATF mobilizes national and state groups to build a grassroots presence at meetings with policymakers, town halls, media events and to deliver our messages through email and social media.
- Convening leading think tanks and constituency groups to identify research and policy needs and to prepare public education materials. ATF assists policymakers in developing progressive tax reform proposals and prepares scores of reports and fact sheets each year used to educate policymakers, the public and the media.